Amelia Ao (17)
It is sometimes dawn
I have this recurring dream. Kind of. Can you call it a dream if you’re not asleep when you’re having it? I don’t know. But in this dream I’m with my brother, and we’re on the rooftop of our house. We’re tossing dandelion wisps onto the heads of pedestrians. The dandelion seeds weave themselves into braids; they plug up nostrils and flutter over eyelashes; children reach up and try to catch them with their breaths; they are swallowed whole by unsuspecting mailmen and saleswomen. My brother throws a handful of dandelions in the air, and they are caught by the wind. They look like fireflies against the pink sky, and we make as many wishes as we can before I wake up.
The truth is I don’t have a brother. I have a sister. My brother died before he was born, but I guess I forget that from time to time. I just kind of know who he is. He’d be small and wiry; he’d have lighter hair than my sister and I. He’d have slimmer lips, more freckles over the bridge of his nose, and eyes flecked with the same kind of quiet, but they would be warmer, like coffee on a Sunday morning. He would be much kinder than us, and much braver, and he would know what many people do not—the fact that humans can be sweet at the same time they are cruel, and that the world keeps on turning even when we yell at it to slow down, and that the best thing we can do is to love one another. I think his name would be either Andrew or Isaac. For short we’d call him Newt, after Isaac Newton, because he’d be much smarter than the rest of us and also much shorter, like the tiny newts I used to catch in my backyard. I think he doesn’t exist, but he’d be much more alive than I am.
The first time I tried to get onto the rooftop, I lost my footing and hurt my wrist. I couldn’t hold a pencil or a paintbrush, so during art class I dipped my fingers in paint and dragged them through my hair. I traced patterns onto my nose, the hollows of my cheeks, the inside of my elbows. I dipped myself in paint and laid down on the hot pavement. When I got up, there was a person of blue and pink and yellow and green, splayed out like he was watching the clouds drift by, assigning them increasingly outlandish shapes to make me laugh. That’s how I imagine him to be.
I am mean to my sister. And I don’t mean to be, I really don’t. She’ll just say something even slightly irritating and I’ll ask her to stop talking or I’ll walk away into my room and not speak to her for the rest of the day. I don’t know if it makes me a bad person, but I’ve never wanted a sister. I’ve wanted a brother. I’ve almost said it a few times, too. When people ask if I have any siblings, I almost tell them I have a brother and that we share homework and love seeing who can launch off the swing higher. Almost. But then I wake up, and he’s gone, and something near the core of who I am breaks a little bit, and I have a little sister.
I thought I saw him last week. There was a new kid at school, right by the library. I saw him, and he was small and wiry with light hair and slim lips. I wanted to tell him that my memory knows you. It asks about you all the time. It’s been looking for you. I’ve been looking for you, where’ve you been? I didn’t think about it at all. It was as if the words simply leapt straight from my heart to the tip of my tongue and I almost choked on them. I almost waved and called out, Hey, Newt, tell Mom I’m staying after school today, ok? But I bit my lip until it bled white-hot scarlet, and we walked past each other. I wanted to laugh, or cry, but I think if I looked at him closer, I would’ve seen that his eyes were more like ash than a warm brown.
I figured out how to get onto the rooftop. You have to climb a ladder and crawl through a window, but I made it somehow. It’s quiet. And I think my brother—my brother? My brother—is telling me to fly, but I lay down instead, my feet dangling over the edge. I think of all the beautiful, damned things, all the things we could and perhaps should be, all the times we wake up and look in the mirror and do things that we don’t want to do. There are no dandelions here, but I still make my wish. I wish that I could get up. I wish that maybe in another life, I would have both brother and sister. I wish that I could save people, why can’t we save people?
This time, I take my sister onto the rooftop with me. Dandelions are woven through our hair, our lungs, our hearts, and we breathe in the heavy air, still warm from the summer. We wait until dawn comes, until our skin melts into our bones, and we are briefly beautiful.
Amelia is a senior at Wayland High School. She’s won various art awards and has been featured in other publications.
It is sometimes dawn
I have this recurring dream. Kind of. Can you call it a dream if you’re not asleep when you’re having it? I don’t know. But in this dream I’m with my brother, and we’re on the rooftop of our house. We’re tossing dandelion wisps onto the heads of pedestrians. The dandelion seeds weave themselves into braids; they plug up nostrils and flutter over eyelashes; children reach up and try to catch them with their breaths; they are swallowed whole by unsuspecting mailmen and saleswomen. My brother throws a handful of dandelions in the air, and they are caught by the wind. They look like fireflies against the pink sky, and we make as many wishes as we can before I wake up.
The truth is I don’t have a brother. I have a sister. My brother died before he was born, but I guess I forget that from time to time. I just kind of know who he is. He’d be small and wiry; he’d have lighter hair than my sister and I. He’d have slimmer lips, more freckles over the bridge of his nose, and eyes flecked with the same kind of quiet, but they would be warmer, like coffee on a Sunday morning. He would be much kinder than us, and much braver, and he would know what many people do not—the fact that humans can be sweet at the same time they are cruel, and that the world keeps on turning even when we yell at it to slow down, and that the best thing we can do is to love one another. I think his name would be either Andrew or Isaac. For short we’d call him Newt, after Isaac Newton, because he’d be much smarter than the rest of us and also much shorter, like the tiny newts I used to catch in my backyard. I think he doesn’t exist, but he’d be much more alive than I am.
The first time I tried to get onto the rooftop, I lost my footing and hurt my wrist. I couldn’t hold a pencil or a paintbrush, so during art class I dipped my fingers in paint and dragged them through my hair. I traced patterns onto my nose, the hollows of my cheeks, the inside of my elbows. I dipped myself in paint and laid down on the hot pavement. When I got up, there was a person of blue and pink and yellow and green, splayed out like he was watching the clouds drift by, assigning them increasingly outlandish shapes to make me laugh. That’s how I imagine him to be.
I am mean to my sister. And I don’t mean to be, I really don’t. She’ll just say something even slightly irritating and I’ll ask her to stop talking or I’ll walk away into my room and not speak to her for the rest of the day. I don’t know if it makes me a bad person, but I’ve never wanted a sister. I’ve wanted a brother. I’ve almost said it a few times, too. When people ask if I have any siblings, I almost tell them I have a brother and that we share homework and love seeing who can launch off the swing higher. Almost. But then I wake up, and he’s gone, and something near the core of who I am breaks a little bit, and I have a little sister.
I thought I saw him last week. There was a new kid at school, right by the library. I saw him, and he was small and wiry with light hair and slim lips. I wanted to tell him that my memory knows you. It asks about you all the time. It’s been looking for you. I’ve been looking for you, where’ve you been? I didn’t think about it at all. It was as if the words simply leapt straight from my heart to the tip of my tongue and I almost choked on them. I almost waved and called out, Hey, Newt, tell Mom I’m staying after school today, ok? But I bit my lip until it bled white-hot scarlet, and we walked past each other. I wanted to laugh, or cry, but I think if I looked at him closer, I would’ve seen that his eyes were more like ash than a warm brown.
I figured out how to get onto the rooftop. You have to climb a ladder and crawl through a window, but I made it somehow. It’s quiet. And I think my brother—my brother? My brother—is telling me to fly, but I lay down instead, my feet dangling over the edge. I think of all the beautiful, damned things, all the things we could and perhaps should be, all the times we wake up and look in the mirror and do things that we don’t want to do. There are no dandelions here, but I still make my wish. I wish that I could get up. I wish that maybe in another life, I would have both brother and sister. I wish that I could save people, why can’t we save people?
This time, I take my sister onto the rooftop with me. Dandelions are woven through our hair, our lungs, our hearts, and we breathe in the heavy air, still warm from the summer. We wait until dawn comes, until our skin melts into our bones, and we are briefly beautiful.
Amelia is a senior at Wayland High School. She’s won various art awards and has been featured in other publications.